#107: San Miguel

San Miguel, by T. C. Boyle

(New York: Viking, 2012)

 Summary:
"This latest novel from Boyle (The Women; When the Killing's Done) portrays two families living and working on barren San Miguel Island off the coast of California. In 1888 Marantha Waters leaves her comfortable life on mainland California and moves out to San Miguel with her adopted daughter and husband, a steely Civil War veteran convinced that he'll have success sheep ranching on the island. Marantha is seriously ill, but instead of breathing the clean, restorative air she expected, she must live in a drafty, moldy shack in a damp environment where the sun rarely shines. Years later, in 1930, Elise Lester, newly wed at 38, moves to San Miguel with her husband, Herbie, a World War I veteran. Though Herbie has his highs and lows, they are happy, and they have two daughters. The outside world learns of their pioneering ways, and they achieve a celebrity Herbie hopes will translate into additional income. Then World War II arrives, and with war in the Pacific, their insular island location may no longer be a refuge"

Opening Line:
"She was coughing, always coughing, and sometimes she coughed up blood."

My Take:
I don't think I'll ever be quite as transported by another of Boyle's books as I was by The Tortilla Curtain, but I know that's my problem. He's a fascinating writer, very skilled technically and with recurring themes (humans vs. nature, government vs. the civilian everyman or -woman, and with the addition of this to When the Killing's Done, apparently the Channel Islands) I enjoy. Intriguing characters here, especially if they were based on real people ... which would explain why the story seems not to have much of a real ending.

#106: The Outsourced Self

The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times, 

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012)

Summary:
"From the famed author of the bestselling The Second Shift and The Time Bind, a pathbreaking look at the transformation of private life in our for-profit world.

"The family has long been a haven in a heartless world, the one place immune to market forces and economic calculations, where the personal, the private, and the emotional hold sway. Yet as Arlie Russell Hochschild shows in The Outsourced Self, that is no longer the case: everything that was once part of private life—love, friendship, child rearing—is being transformed into packaged expertise to be sold back to confused, harried Americans.

"Drawing on hundreds of interviews and original research, Hochschild follows the incursions of the market into every stage of intimate life. From dating services that train you to be the CEO of your love life to wedding planners who create a couple's "personal narrative"; from nameologists (who help you name your child) to wantologists (who help you name your goals); from commercial surrogate farms in India to hired mourners who will scatter your loved one's ashes in the ocean of your choice—Hochschild reveals a world in which the most intuitive and emotional of human acts have become work for hire.

"Sharp and clear-eyed, Hochschild is full of sympathy for overstressed, outsourcing Americans, even as she warns of the market's threat to the personal realm they are striving so hard to preserve."

Table of Contents:

1. You Have Three Seconds
2. The Legend of the Lemon Tree
3. For as Long as You Both Shall Live
4. Our Baby, Her Womb
5. My Womb, Their Baby
6. It Takes a Service Mall
7. Making Five-Year-Olds Laugh Is Harder than You Think
8. A High Score in Family Memory Creation
9. Importing Family Values
10. I Was Invisible to Myself
11. Nolan Enjoys My Father for Me
12. Anything You Pay For Is Better
13. I Would Have Done It If She'd Been My Mother
14. Endings 
15. The Wantologist

My Take:
Another Second Shift or Time Bind this ain't. I suspect Hochschild's decision to write it was born of her own conflicted, guilt-spiked feelings at seeking a paid caregiver for her elderly aunt, and I think the book might have been stronger and more compelling had it focused on those intimate activities -- child and elder care, for example -- that pretty much everyone needs, and which have increasingly been moved to the market sphere and paid for. That story's been told many times, though, so what we're left with seems less like a thoughtful exposition and discussion-starter and more a voyeuristic "Wow, look at all the crazy, unnecessary stuff the 1% (or maybe just the 0.1 or 0.01%) will pay people to do for them!" Sure, it's interesting and may seem creepy or just weird that someone who's rich enough will spend beaucoup bucks on a kid's birthday party or various aspects of the wedding-industrial complex, but it's hardly a social problem on the order of the second shift.

#103: Dancing to "Almendra"

Dancing to "Almendra," by Mayra Montero 

(translated by Edith Grossman)

(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007)

Summary:
"Havana, 1957. On the same day that the Mafia capo Umberto Anastasia is assassinated in a barber's chair in New York, a hippopotamus escapes from the Havana zoo and is shot and killed by its pursuers. Assigned to cover the zoo story, Joaquin Porrata, a young Cuban journalist, instead finds himself embroiled in the mysterious connections between the hippo's death and the mobster's when a secretive zookeeper whispers to him that he 'knows too much.' In exchange for a promise to introduce the keeper to his idol, the film star George Raft, now the host of the Capri Casino, Joaquin gets information that ensnares him in an ever-thickening plot of murder, mobsters, and, finally, love.

"The love story is, of course, another mystery. Told by Yolanda, a beautiful ex-circus performer now working for the famed cabaret San Souci, it interleaves through Joaquin's underworld investigations, eventually revealing a family secret deeper even than Havana's brilliantly evoked enigmas.

"In Dancing to 'Almendra,' Mayra Montero has created an ardent and thrilling tale of innocence lost, of Havana's secret world that is 'the basis for the clamor of the city,' and of the end of a violent era of fantastic characters and extravagant crimes."

Opening Line:
"On the same day Umberto Anastasia was killed in New York, a hippopotamus escaped from the zoo in Havana."

My Take:
Awesome as that opening line is, I think this was one of those books I'd hoped to like a lot more than I did. More good writing (how I wish I could produce it instead of just recognizing it, but sadly, whatever facility with words I once had, I don't have two original thoughts to rub together), and certainly Batista-era Havana is as much a character in the novel as anyone else. Noir isn't really my favorite genre, though, so I'm probably not the person who'd get the most from this book.
 

#100: Between You and Me

Between You and Me, by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

(New York: Atria Books, 2012)

Summary:
"Twenty-seven-year-old Logan Wade is trying to build a life for herself far from her unhappy childhood in Oklahoma. Until she gets the call that her famous cousin needs a new assistant -- an offer she can't refuse.

"Logan hasn't seen Kelsey in person since their parents separated them as kids; in the meantime, Kelsey Wade has grown into Fortune Magazine's most powerful celebrity. But their reunion is quickly overshadowed by the toxic dynamic between Kelsey and her parents as Logan discovers that, beneath the glossy facade, the wounds that caused them to be wrenched apart so many years ago have insidiously warped into a showstopping family business.

"As Kelsey tries desperately to break away and grasp at a 'real' life, beyond the influence of her parents and managers, she makes one catastrophic misstep after another, and Logan must question if their childhood has left them both too broken to succeed. Logan risks everything to hold on, but when Kelsey unravels in the most horribly public way, Logan finds that she will ultimately have to choose between rescuing the girl she has always protected ... and saving herself."

Opening Line:
"'Okay, we're coming up on our final hill,' Sandra, my instructor. puffs into her microphone, reaching out from her bike to dim the spin room's lights even further."

My Take:
Poor McLaughlin and Kraus. While I'm sure they're laughing all the way to the bank, I think by now it's safe to say that they're unlikely to ever have another zeitgeist-grabbing megahit anywhere close to what they did with The Nanny Diaries. You and Me was good enough, an entertaining, engaging few days' read -- but not so memorable and compelling that I can picture where I was and what else was going on while I read it (in contrast to Dedication, for example, which wasn't really much better but does conjure up my room in the Colonial Building on Boylston Street). This one does a lot of hinting at some deep, dark back story behind Logan and Kelsey's childhood separation, and at the creepiness of Kelsey's overly close relationship with her parents, but never delivers anything scandalous or surprising enough to merit all the ominous foreshadowing. As a story of Logan, girl next door who stumbles into the bright lights, big city of celebrity and finds it's not all it's cracked up to be, it's OK, but not terribly memorable. 

#98: French Kids Eat Everything

French Kids Eat Everything: 

How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters, by Karen Le Billon

(New York: William Morrow, 2012)

 

Summary:

"Moving her young family to her husband's hometown in northern France, Karen Le Billon is prepared for some cultural adjustment but is surprised by the food education she and her family (at first unwillingly) receive. In contrast to her daughters, French children feed themselves neatly and happily -- eating everything from beets to broccoli, salad to spinach, mussels to muesli. The family's food habits come under scrutiny, as Karen is lectured for slipping her fussing toddler a snack -- 'a recipe for obesity!' -- and forbidden from packing her older daughter a lunch in lieu of the elaborate school meal.

"The family soon begins to see the wisdom in the 'food rules' that help the French foster healthy eating habits and good manners -- from the rigid 'no snacking' rule to commonsense food routines that we used to share but have somehow forgotten. Soon, the family cures picky eating and learns to love trying new foods. But the real challenge comes when they move back to North America -- where their commitment to 'eating French' is put to the test. The result is a family food revolution with surprising but happy results -- which suggest we need to dramatically rethink the way we feed children, at home and at school."

Table of Contents:

1. French Kids Eat Everything (and Yours Can Too)
2. Baby Steps and Beet Puree: We Move to France, and Encounter Unidentified Edible Objects
3. Schooling the Stomach: We Start Learning to "Eat French" (the Hard Way)
4. L'art de la table: A Meal with Friends, and a Friendly Argument
5. Food Fights: How Not to Get Your Kids to Eat Everything
6. The Kohlrabi Experiment: Learning to Love New Foods
7. Four Square Meals a Day: Why French Kids Don't Snack
8. Slow Food Nation: It's Not Only What You Eat, It's Also How You Eat
9. The Best of Both Worlds
10. The Most Important Food Rule of All 

My Take:
Liked it, but not quite so much as Bringing Up Bebe. I think the chief difference is that Le Billon managed to push some of my rusty-but-still-functioning parental guilt/ smugness buttons in a way Druckerman's book didn't. To be fair, the two aren't identical; French Kids is more narrowly focused on the French attitude towards food and eating, while Bebe is a broader observation on French parenting in general.

Anyway, it's no secret that I've wrestled with my share of parenting demons over the years. I've always been a working mother; I nursed my daughter for a year; she has no siblings. For all the much-publicized trials of raising a teenager, this is one thing that gets better with time; you've realized by now that whether and how long you breast-fed and what you do from 9 to 5 really doesn't matter all that much, and you can commiserate with other parents about adolescent attitude flare-ups without their insisting that you wouldn't have this problem if only you were co-sleeping.

One of the areas where I never quite fit the toddler parenting mold was preparedness. I carried a diaper bag when we still needed one, and would toss in a favorite toy or 2 if we were traveling to a kid-free home overnight, but other than that, I was never The Mom Who Has Everything. And while I sometimes wished I had a Band-Aid or box o' wipes handy, neither Twig nor I ever suffered for a lack of little prepackaged baggies of Teddy Grahams and goldfish crackers. Sure, I felt a little sheepish on those play dates where other moms ended up feeding both their own kid and mine from their Cheerios stash, but I also knew Twig was way more interested in the playground than the food, and probably wouldn't have thought to ask for a snack on her own if her friend wasn't having one right there in front of her. In fact, my first inkling that the local Supermom (a truly lovely person whose child was Twig's favorite preschool playmate) just might not win all the medals in the parenting Olympics came when we took the kids to lunch at a grocery store cafe, and Twig happily devoured her strawberries and yogurt without much prompting, while Supermom laboriously spread cream cheese on tortilla chips one by one for Superkid.

Point is, I was primed from the get-go to do some private eye-rolling at some of the French parenting norms that proved so hard for Le Billon to accept. Of course you don't make special kid-friendly food at every meal; if a child is hungry enough, s/he'll eat at least some of what everyone else is having. And naturally the after-school snack can wait till you get home; barring exceptional circumstances, there's no need for regularly dining a la car. (5 hour road trips? Sure, pack a few snacks. A 15-minute trip home from school or day care? Not so much.) Long story short (or at least shorter than it would be if I kept on keepin' on), Le Billon's observations about French food culture are fascinating to think about for anyone interested in the topic, whether or not they have young children, though I ended up without much sympathy for the author herself.

#97: The Middlesteins

The Middlesteins, by Jami Attenberg

(New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2012)

Summary:
"For more than thirty years, Edie and Richard Middlestein shared a solid family life together in the suburbs of Chicago -- two children, a nice house, ample employment, and generous friends. But things are splintering apart, for one reason, it seems: Edie's fixated on food -- thinking about it, eating it -- and if she doesn't stop, she won't have much longer to live.


"When Richard abandons his wife, it is up to the next generation to take control. Robin, their schoolteacher daughter, is determined that her father pay for leaving Edie. Benny, an easygoing, pot-smoking family man, just wants to smooth things over. And Rachelle -- a whippet-thin perfectionist -- is intent on saving her mother-in-law's life, but this task proves even bigger than planning her twin children's spectacular b'nai mitzvah party. Through it all, they wonder: Do Edie's devastating choices rest on her shoulders alone, or are others at fault, too?"

Opening Line:
"How could she not feed their daughter?"

My Take:
I formally left Catholicism almost 14 years ago, and hadn't been to confession in more than a decade before that, but sometimes, childhood memories die hard. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been two months since my last blog post.

This doesn't mean I haven't been reading (though I've slacked off since New Year's, completing a whopping 2 books since the start of January); only that I haven't carved out time to blog about what I've read. That's part of a way bigger issue that merits contemplation, but for now, I think I'll just bang out a scarcely-commented log of what I've read since then.

So here goes. Loved The Middlesteins, and also loved in a quietly arrogant way that this was one I happened to stumble across and read before all the reviewers seized upon it. I think it was the NYT Book Review podcast that mentioned this one just before Thanksgiving, calling it a meditation on the complex relationships and obligatory dysfunctions that are part of every family; I'd read it as an observation on Edie's obesity being a natural outgrowth of women's/ mothers' traditional nurturing/ caregiving roles, but I don't think either view is unjustified. As to whether it hit a wee bit close to home given my own weight and emotional eating struggles over the years, well ... as I said earlier, that's a subject for another, much longer post. In the meantime, let's leave it at saying I really enjoyed the book and would recommend it highly to others.

#96: Survival Mom

Survival Mom: The Modern Family's Guide 

to Any Apocalypse, by Lisa Bedford

(New York: HarperOne, 2012)

 

Summary:
"Undaunted by the prospect of TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World as We Know It), Lisa Bedford tackles every what-if and worst-case scenario head-on, offering practical advice on how to prepare your family for whatever might come your way. From a few days without electricity to an unexpected job loss or total chaos after the destruction of a tornado, Survival Mom provides everything you need to become self-reliant and establish plans for your family, including:

• preparing the home for a natural disaster
• alternative sources of energy in a power's-out situation
• everything you need to know about food storage
• personal protection (do I really need to learn how to shoot a gun?)

"Deep inside every mom is a Survival Mom whose passion for her family drives her to make the best of the present and prepare for the future. So tap into your Mama Grizzly instincts and channel your worries into action. Whether you're a full-fledged 'prepper' or just getting started, with real-life stories and customizable forms and checklists along with Lisa's 'you can do it' attitude, Survival Mom replaces paranoia and panic with the peace of knowing YOU have the power to keep your loved ones safe and secure."

Table of Contents:

• Quiz: What Kind of Survival Mom Are You?
• From Suburban Mom to Survival Mom, an Introduction
• 1. Prepare More, Panic Less
• 2. Survival Begins with Water
• 3. Keeping It Clean: The Ins and Outs of Sanitation
• 4. The First Steps of Food Storage
• 5. Increase Your Food Storage Savvy
• 6. Your Home Base
• 7. The Unplugged Home: Learning to Live Without Electricity
• 8. The Essentials for Safety and Security
• 9. Survival Finances
• 10. It Takes a Compound
• 11. Preparedness on the Go: Evacuation Basics
• 12. Survival Mom to Survival Mom

My Take:
I've heard that life imitates art, and stumbled into enough eerie parallels between what's going on around me and what's on my bookshelf to agree. Sometimes, it's just a weird but minor coincidence that makes me smile to myself. Other times, I'd much rather my reading material have remained irrelevant. If you've been in or even aware of the northeastern US last week, you know this is one of those other times. I read this book last week, when I was still adjusting to my 90-minute commute and too brain-dead in the evenings to tackle anything other than a very concrete, lots-of-bulleted-lists self-help manual. Bedford's tone here really isn't particularly alarmist, and I'm too fond of my coffee and libraries to seriously contemplate going off-the-grid, but hearing the news reports and office chit-chat about Hurricane Sandy's approach and then falling asleep envisioning some of the scenarios for which Survival Mom recommends preparing had me sufficiently shaken that I sent Filbert out to stock up on batteries and flashlights and packed a change of clothes and an extra granola bar in my satchel when I set out for work on Monday, just in case.

Here in my neck of the woods, we were lucky. It rained steadily for a few days, and the wind gusts buffeting my little Matrix Monday evening were a bit unsettling, but that was all. The power never even flickered, and with no school for Twig or I and no real weather of consequence, Tuesday felt almost like a holiday, complete with a drizzly stroll downtown and a decadent soda-fountain float for dessert. My hometown, though, where my parents and siblings still live, was another story. It could have been worse, of course; they aren't in Breezy Point, where some 50 homes burned to the ground during the storm, or in any of the coastal Jersey communities of which aerial photos show only rooftops above the flood waters. Three-quarters of the Thyme family never left their homes, and got their power back on Thursday night. The glorious, seemingly immortal pin oak still towers over the house we grew up in, though Dad's started to make noises about how it's not looking so great after two years of hurricane damage and maybe he should take it down himself before another storm beats him to it. Most importantly, everyone is safe and healthy, including my newborn niece (who's fated to spend her every birthday hearing the grown-ups retell Hurricane Sandy stories that grow taller even as she does). Still, I see loved ones with flooded homes (some for the second time in two years), beaches and other beloved landmarks devastated, news of fights breaking out in gas station lines that make me wonder if some of Lisa Bedford's more apocalyptic what-ifs are really as far-fetched as I'd initially thought.

I don't want to co-opt this disaster into Hurricane Hazelthyme, grasping at whatever tenuous connection to tragedy I can so as to make myself the center of attention. But along with the obvious sadness and loss, I feel guilty, regret that I let my own busyness and awkwardness keep me from staying closer to these friends and relatives all along so I could offer help or at least sympathy now without being perceived as a tourist or a vulture. As the only one of four siblings who settled more than 15 miles from the aforementioned pin oak, I'm accustomed to feeling cut off from my family and my home town. I last lived there at 18, when few people are yet fully comfortable in their own skin, and as I now live 5 hours away, there will always be parties I can't attend and "in" jokes I Just Don't Get. Usually, though, what I'm missing are happy things: a Father's Day cookout, a shared beach house, my nephew's birthday party, a spontaneous dinner with my oldest friend, a chance meeting and drink with a former high school classmate in a neighborhood bar. I could walk into one of these events any time, and while I'd be a recurring guest star rather than a featured-in-the-title-sequence main character, I'd nonetheless be welcome; as Robert Frost said "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Strange to say, though, I find myself wishing I'd gone out of my way to accept more party invitations, haunt more local watering holes, and make more phone calls and Facebook posts while I was there, so that I'd have earned the right to help haul ruined furniture out of some flooded basements now.

So much for not making it all about me. At any rate, this started because I'd read Survival Mom, which offers a solid, well-organized guide to increasing your family's self-sufficiency and disaster preparedness, provided you don't mind or can overlook some of the more catastrophic scenarios the author imagines. In Sandy's wake, few would argue with the logic of storing enough food and water for at least a week, even if the 2 to 3 months' supply Bedford recommends is more than your storage space or organizational skills can handle. Likewise, it suddenly seems prudent to have not just a backup plan, but a backup backup plan, for any major what-if; the generator you've been storing won't do you much good if you can't get more gas when you need it. And we've all known at least since 2008, if not earlier, that maintaining enough savings to cover several months of living expenses (Bedford recommends at least 6) is a smart idea, while buying a home you won't be able to afford if the slightest thing goes wrong (you lose your job, your spouse takes a pay cut, someone in your family becomes seriously ill, interest rates go up) is not.

Side tangent, though: Suggesting that a stay-at-home parent represents some sort of asset in case of emergency, because "[i]f Dad should lose his job, the family's income will take a big hit, but [they] have some interesting options. ... If things got really tight, Mom could become a math tutor or get a job as an accountant or bookkeeper" didn't make sense when Elizabeth Warren did in in The Two Income Trap, and certainly isn't any more plausible here. If the job market is such that Dad, who's been in the workforce all along, has a hard time finding a new job, how is a Mom who hasn't done any paid work in years going to suddenly find work that pays enough to provide significant support for her family? Unless Mom really has some rare skill set that's a) in high demand where she lives, and b) not sufficiently valued by her having been out of the workforce for some period, a better recommendation is for a family to avoid spending all their income as soon as they earn it, whether it's 1 or 2 adults doing the earning ... and to keep your skills sharp and your mind open, so that if whatever your family's current division of paid and domestic labor stops working for whatever reason, everyone's willing to change what they're doing either temporarily or long-term, whether that means picking up a second or part-time job, switching careers, or putting more time into cooking, canning, gardening, and home maintenance to offset the lack of cash you now have for such things.

Anyway, my original point from, oh, about 2 paragraphs back, is that while some of the information Bedford offers is practical, clear, and accessible even for those fairly new to the whole preparedness/ survival genre. Where she loses me, though, is where she drifts from preparing for the sorts of (oxymoron alert!) ordinary disasters that will at least touch most of us at some point -- hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, ice storms, floods, wildfires, job loss -- to apocalyptic scenarios that sound more like something out of a Cormac McCarthy novel:

• "Nuclear events -- including, but not limited to, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), suitcase bombs, and actual mushroom clouds;
• "Terrorist attacks -- these could happen anywhere, anytime, although I have to admit that terrorists seem to favor New York City;
• "Social unrest -- riots, strikes, large-scale and violent protests;
• "Increased crime rate -- home invasions, car-jackings, burglaries;
• "Economic collapse -- the devaluation of the dollar, bank closures, hyperinflation, a significant stock market crash;
• "Biological catastrophes -- epidemics or pandemics, biological warfare;
• "Utter and complete collapse of civilization -- it's happened before, and it can happen again."

 Maybe I'm just naive or in grave denial, but I have a hard time seriously contemplating any of the above -- or at least attempting to prepare for their remote possibility. To be fair, Bedford does note that not all conceivable disasters are equally likely, and that "it's important to assess which emergency situations are most likely to happen in you area and in your specific set of circumstances."

"In a way, making plans for emergencies is a bit like gambling. You start with the event that has the highest odds first and work your way down from there. Really, should your very first concern be a nuclear attack? Probably not. The odds are much better for a severe weather event, increased crime, or a natural disaster common to your area. Even better odds favor a deep decline in family income and the inability to pay rent or mortgage payments."

Under the circumstances, I'm willing to ignore some of her more extreme recommendations about preparing for economic collapse and building a safe room in her house, not to mention the whole firearms chapter, and just conclude that perhaps she's read a few too many of the male-targeted survivalist books and magazines she claims inspired Survival Mom and ended up with a somewhat skewed perspective on what's dangerous as a result. Perhaps I just took one too many economics classes and have too much innate pessimism, but I tend to think the danger of complete economic or societal collapse or ending up in a terrorist's cross-hairs is sufficiently remote, and the chance of our anticipating or successfully shielding ourselves from harm if one of these events does come to pass, make for an insufficient return on the time and money we'd need to invest in the attempt. (Had I been in the South Tower on 9/11, no personal firearm or inventory of home-canned peaches would have made a difference. Just saying.)

#93: Ten Thousand Saints

Ten Thousand Saints, by Eleanor Henderson

(New York: Ecco, 2011)

Summary:
"Adopted by a pair of diehard hippies, restless, marginal Jude Keffy-Horn spends much of his youth getting high with his best friend, Teddy, in their bucolic and deeply numbing Vermont town. But when Teddy dies of an overdose on the last day of 1987, Jude's relationship with drugs and with his parents devolves to new extremes. Sent to live with his pot-dealing father in New York City's East Village, Jude stumbles upon straight edge, an underground youth culture powered by the paradoxical aggression of hardcore punk and a righteous intolerance for drugs, meat, and sex. With Teddy's half brother, Johnny, and their new friend, Eliza, Jude tries to honor Teddy's memory through his militantly clean lifestyle. But his addiction to straight edge has its own dangerous consequences. While these teenagers battle to discover themselves, their parents struggle with this new generation's radical reinterpretation of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll and their grown-up awareness of nature and nurture, brotherhood and loss.

"Moving back and forth between Vermont and New York City, Ten Thousand Saints is an emphatically observed story of a frayed tangle of family members brought painfully together by a death, then carried along in anticipation of a new and unexpected life. With empathy and masterful skill, Eleanor Henderson has conjured a rich portrait of the modern age and the struggles that unite and divide generations."

 Opening Lines:
"'Is it dreamed?' Jude asks Teddy. 'Or dreamt?'"

My Take:
Perhaps I was feeling unusually uncharitable here, as I read this one right after Imperial Bedrooms and had had it up to here with drug-addled adolescents before I tackled the first chapter. That said, Ten Thousand Saints didn't overwhelm me. It wasn't repugnant the way IB was, and the characters here were rather more sympathetic -- partly because it's set in the '80s and definitely conveys that this was a different time, and partly because it's easier to excuse adolescent behavior when it actually comes from adolescents.

And perhaps I just bring too much of my own baggage to the story. Jude and Teddy are of my generation, a mere two years older than I am, which means I should be able to relate to their world ... but I really can't. Sure, I grew up 30 miles from the NYC where much of the story is set, but that may as well have been another universe, and my suburban adolescence was probably more sheltered than most. Mine wasn't a drugging or even hard drinking crowd, if the motley handful of not-yet-cool nerds I occasionally socialized with constituted a "crowd" at all. I never had any burning desire to fit in either with the stoners who make up Jude & Teddy's clique at the beginning, and I don't think I knew such a thing as straight-edge existed at the time. Punk, yes, but much as I loved the music, I was well aware a big-haired teeny bopper from the 'burbs would have been eaten alive in that environment. Instead, I contented myself with volunteering at a crisis line throughout high school and growing vicariously wise through the lives that touched me there.

It's interesting, too, to look back on the '80s with enough distance and perspective that you're aware of the hallmarks of the era. As a middle and high schooler, I knew something about the culture and history of the 1920s or '40s or '60s -- enough to reference an era convincingly in a term paper, or make guesses about how my grandparents' adolescence differed from my parents' or my own. But I couldn't articulate what made the '80s the '80s or what future generations would see as the hallmarks of my decade, any more than my daughter can define the 2010s or a particularly conscious fish could tell you what it's like to breathe water rather than air. Ten Thousand Saints depicts the era as a very long, unglamorous morning after the hedonistic '70s, with the principals' parents as the clueless hung over guests you just know will spend the next week bragging about how awesome the party was and how wasted they were, and Jude, Johnny, and Eliza the housemates who get stuck cleaning up all the spilled food and broken glass. Jude's mom, Harriet, is the canonical leftover hippie, naming her kids after Beatles songs (Jude's sister is Prudence), selling handblown glass in a small town in Vermont, and earning the bulk of her income selling bongs; his father, Lester, is a successful Manhattan pot grower who takes pride in being a cool, approachable pseudo-stepdad to his girlfriend's daughter Eliza but hasn't bothered to contact his own kids in who knows how long. After Teddy's death, Jude and Eliza's guilt leads them (with Johnny's help) to discover the no-drugs, no-drinking, no-sex world of straight edge, drawing spiritual sustenance from a Hare Krisha temple whose connection to the former is never exactly clear.

Henderson's writing is clear, understated, and sad, and the setting an interesting, unusual one. I only wish the characters (yes, this is always a sticking point for me) felt big or complex enough to live up to it. The book was OK, and I finished it -- but it felt more like a duty than a pleasure to get through (although it did get somewhat better in the latter part).

#91: An Available Man

An Available Man, by Hilma Wolitzer

(New York: Ballantine Books, 2012)

Summary:
"In this tender and funny novel, award-winning author Hilma Wolitzer mines the unpredictable fallout of suddenly becoming single later in life, and the chaos and joys of falling in love the second time around. When Edward Schuyler, a modest and bookish sixty-two-year-old science teacher, is widowed, he finds himself ambushed by female attention. There are plenty of unattached women around, but a healthy, handsome, available man is a rare and desirable creature. Edward receives phone calls from widows seeking love, or at least lunch, while well-meaning friends try to set him up at dinner parties. Even an attractive neighbor offers herself to him.

"The problem is that Edward doesn't feel available. He's still mourning his beloved wife, Bee, and prefers solitude and the familiar routine of work, gardening, and bird-watching. But then his stepchildren surprise him by placing a personal ad in The New York Review of Books on his behalf. Soon the letters flood in, and Edward is torn between his loyalty to Bee's memory and his growing longing for connection. Gradually, reluctantly, he begins dating ('dating after death,' as one correspondent puts it), and his encounters are variously startling, comical, and sad. Just when Edward thinks he has the game figured our, a chance meeting proves that love always arrives when it's least expected.

"With wit, warmth, and a keen understanding of the heart, An Available Man explores aspects of loneliness and togetherness, and the difference in the options open to men and women of a certain age. Most of all, the novel celebrates the endurance of love, and its thrilling capacity to bloom anew."

Opening Line:
"Edward Schuyler was ironing his oldest blue oxford shirt in the living room on a Saturday afternoon when the first telephone call came."

My Take:
This and I Thought You Were Dead, together, should be required reading for anyone who's laying low and convalescing, whether from a stubborn case of bronchitis or from acute heartbreak. What a lovely, understated story of widowhood, grief, loneliness, and ultimately, love. Edward is just so real and likeable; he felt like a distant but kind relative, or the neighbor you always meant to have in for supper. And some of his first forays into dating are both poignant and funny: the businesslike woman with whom he has nothing in common, but who nonetheless expects sex at the end of the evening; the friendly widow who can't stop talking about her late husband and displaying photo after photo of their lives together; the cosmetically-altered, seemingly ageless 70 year old. The supporting cast are also well-sketched, particularly Edward's fragile stepdaughter Julie and tough-old-bird mother-in-law Gladys. I'm even OK with the reasonably happy ending.

#89: I Thought You Were Dead

I Thought You Were Dead, by Peter Nelson 

(Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2010)

 Summary:
 "For Paul Gustavson, a hack writer for the wildly popular For Morons series, life is a succession of obstacles, a minefield of mistakes to stumble through. His wife has left him, his father has suffered a debilitating stroke, his girlfriend is dating another man, he has impotency issues, and his overachieving brother has invested his parents' money in stocks that tanked. Still, Paul has his friends at Bay State bar, a steady line of cocktails, a new pair of running shoes, and Stella. Beautiful Stella. With long, sleek legs, kind eyes, lustrous blond hair. Their relationship is the one true bright spot in his world. She offers him sage advice on virtually every topic. And she only wets herself every once in a while.

"Stella is Paul's dog, and she listens with compassion to all his complaints about the injustices of life and gives him better counsel than any human could. In fact, she seems to know Paul better than he knows himself. It's their relationship that is at the heart of I Thought You Were Dead, a poignantly funny and deeply moving story about a man trying to fix his past in order to save his future, and about a dog who understands just what it means to be a man's best friend."

Opening Line:
"In the winter of 1998, at the close of the twentieth century, in a small college town on the Connecticut River, on the sidewalk outside a house close enough to the railroad tracks that the pictures on the walls were in constant need of straightening, not that anybody ever straightened them, Paul Gustavson, having had a bit too much to drink, took the glove off his right hand, wedged it into his left armpit, and fumbled in his pants pocket for his house keys."

My Take:
Surprising. I wouldn't have expected to enjoy a novel that opens with a run-on sentence like this, or one where the protagonist's talking dog is an important character -- but this is a sweet, gentle story about a lonely man at a crossroads trying to come to terms and move forward with his imperfect life. (And the talking dog works, even for a diehard realist like me, if you read it as Paul simply talking to his dog while they're alone, and imagining what she might say if she could indeed respond. Don't all pet owners do this?) Paul's relationship with his struggling father, which evolves primarily over the internet, is especially poignant. His ill-defined relationship with Tamsen is an interesting plot line as well, though I wasn't as satisfied with the way Nelson resolved this one.

#86 Trans-Sister Radio

Trans-Sister Radio, by Chris Bohjalian 

(New York: Random House, 2000)

 Summary:
"When schoolteacher Allison Banks develops a crush on university professor Dana Stevens, she knows that he will give her what she needs most: gentleness, kindness, passion. Her daughter, Carly, enthusiastically witnesses the change in her mother. But a few months into their relationship, Dana tells Allison his secret: he has always been certain that he is a woman born into the wrong skin, and soon he will have a sex-change operation. Allison, overwhelmed by the depth of her love, finds herself unable to leave him—but by deciding to stay she must face questions most people never even consider. Not only will her own life and Carly's be irrevocably changed, she will have to contend with the outrage of her small Vermont community and come to terms with her lover's new sense of self—and hope against hope that her love will transcend their ingrained notions of what it means to be a man and a woman."

Opening Line:
"I was eight when my parents separated, and nine when they actually divorced."

My Take:
This is Bohjalian at his peak, worthy to stand alongside Midwives and The Double Bind rather than the remaindered pale shadows of The Night Strangers and its ilk. The story is narrated from four different perspectives: Allison's, Dana's, Carly's (who opens the book with the line above), and that of Allison's ex-husband and Carly's father, Will. Admittedly, I did predict one of the points in the closing, which was probably supposed to be a twist -- probably just because I've read too many novels by Bohjalian and Jodi Picoult. Not sure I totally buy how calmly both Allison and Carly seem to accept Dana's revelation, but the former, at least, is sufficiently well-explained that it's not wholly ridiculous. And I especially enjoyed the reaction from Allison's school community (parents demanding to have their kids transferred out of her class, a wishy-washy first year principal, etc.). If anything, the book could have used a bit more conflict among the main characters; most of it comes from the school, whereas any friction between the protagonists seems minor and quickly resolved. Still a good read, though.

#85: Lily White

Lily White, by Susan Isaacs

New York: HarperCollins, 1996

 Summary:
"Meet Lily White, Long Island criminal defense lawyer. Smart, savvy, and down-to-earth, Lee can spot a phony the way her snooty mother can spot an Armani. Enter handsome career con man Norman Torkelson, charged with murder; to wit, strangling his latest mark after bilking her out of her life's savings. As the astounding twists and reverses of the Torkelson case are revealed, so too is the riveting story behind Lee's life.


"The critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author ... Susan Isaacs has crafted her most dazzling novel of manners and morality. Lily White is a brilliantly crafted story of con artists and true lovers, of treachery and devotion -- and of one brave lawyer's triumphant fight for justice."

Opening Line:
"I was never a virgin."


My Take:
Needed something just plain entertaining after the density of 1491 and the often-heavy subject matter of Redemption ... plus, this is a small paperback that won't add much to the weight of my suitcase on the flight home. Should be fun.

(Afterwards) A fluffy, reasonably entertaining airplane read, which is about what I was looking for. Certainly worth the quarter I paid for it at the Boston Public Library book sale, though not one I'll need to keep around now that I've read it once. The book alternates between two stories:  Lily/ Lee's childhood, growing up in the fictional Shorehaven, Long Island in the 1960s and '70s; and the tale of her defending Norman Torkelson. Of the two, I found the former more interesting, but don't know exactly why. There's even a mystery of sorts in Lee's past: Who is the male partner she refers to throughout the book (but never by name), and how did they come together? My suspicions on this point were wrong not once, but three times (sort of), so props to Isaacs on that score -- though I'm not sure I'm 100% pleased with the final answer to this question.

Regarding the Torkelson case, this was a reasonably engaging story in itself. In brief, with no spoilers, even though the prosecution's case against Torkelson looks rock solid, and a professional con man does not the world's most sympathetic witness make, Lee's seen more than enough evidence to convince her that Norman's girlfriend Mary is a far more likely suspect. The trouble? Norman flatly refuses to let Lee talk to Mary, or to offer any defense for himself other than a simple, "I didn't kill her." Is he conning Lee, Mary, or both of them? What's Mary's own angle? And just how accurate are Lee's suspicions?

As I've said of many a book before, serious literature this one ain't -- but if you're looking for something fun to read on a trip, this will suffice.

#82: The Reeducation of Cherry Truong

The Reeducation of Cherry Truong, by Aimee Phan

New York: St. Martin's Press, 2012

 Summary:
"Cherry Truong’s parents have exiled her wayward older brother from their Southern California home, sending him to Vietnam to live with distant relatives.  Determined to bring him back, twenty-one-year-old Cherry travels to their homeland and finds herself on a journey to uncover her family’s decades-old secrets—hidden loves, desperate choices, and lives ripped apart by the march of war and currents of history.

"The Reeducation of Cherry Truong tells the story of two fierce and unforgettable families, the Truongs and the Vos: their harrowing escape from Vietnam after the war, the betrayal that divided them, and the stubborn memories that continue to bind them years later, even as they come to terms with their hidden sacrifices and bitter mistakes. Kim-Ly, Cherry’s grandmother, once wealthy and powerful in Vietnam, now struggles to survive in Little Saigon, California without English or a driver’s license. Cherry’s other grandmother Hoa, whose domineering husband has developed dementia, discovers a cache of letters from a woman she thought had been left behind. As Cherry pieces their stories together, she uncovers the burden of her family’s love and the consequences of their choices.

"Set in Vietnam, France, and the United States, Aimee Phan’s sweeping debut novel reveals a family still yearning for reconciliation, redemption, and a place to call home."

Opening Line:
"Cherry releases the grip around her brother, steadying her trembling feet onto the hot, bright concrete."

My Take:
A decent immigrant saga and family story, but would have been better if the title character hadn't been so much of a cipher. All we know is that she's a good student and curious about her family history, but we don't ever get much insight into what she's thinking and feeling as the events of the book unfold (or as she discovers what and how events unfolded in the past).

#79: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski

(New York: Ecco, 2008)

Summary:
"David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle explores the silent world of the novel’s protagonist, Edgar Sawtelle. Edgar lives in Wisconsin during the middle of the twentieth century. Born mute, he is a teenager who seems to prefer the language of dogs more than the words of the adults around him. From his earliest memories, his favorite job on the farm was to name the new puppies that were born there. He chooses names randomly from a dictionary. As he grows older, his connection with the dogs becomes more profound. He helps to train them through sign language.

"Wroblewski begins his novel with Edgar’s grandfather, telling readers about how the dog farm began. When Edgar’s father, Gar, dies suspiciously, Edgar blames his uncle Claude, his father’s younger brother, who has meant nothing but trouble for the family. When Claude makes romantic overtures to Edgar’s mother, Trudy, Edgar is outraged.

"The story is filled with loving family memories until Claude arrives. Claude spends most of his time in the barn or at the local bar. The details of Claude’s life are sketchy at best and Edgar finds Claude to be two-faced. The man presents his best side to Edgar’s mother. She falls for him, allowing him to fill in the vacant spaces left behind from her husband’s death. Edgar sees the other side of Claude, a side that Edgar finds dangerous.

"When tensions become too strong between Edgar and Claude, Edgar takes his favorite dogs and runs away from home. For the story itself, this tension raises the level of curiosity for the reader. It is at this point that the novel takes on the form of a mystery or a sort of detective story. Edgar fears the police are looking for him because of an accidental death that he played a part in. Readers worry that Edgar might be caught because Claude is suggesting to local officials that Edgar committed murder. In the end, it is Edgar versus Claude—a fight to the finish. Unfortunately, there are no winners."

Opening Line:
"In the year 1919, Edgar's grandfather, who was born with an extra share of whimsy, bought their land and all the buildings on it from a man he'd never met, a man named Schultz, who in his turn had walked away from a logging team half a decade earlier after seeing the chains on a fully loaded timber sled let go."

My Take: 
OK, this one I liked. For a change, I actually preferred the first, oh, two-thirds or so to the end (suffice it to say that I have a low tolerance for characters speaking or otherwise interacting with the dead) but it was still an engaging story with deep characters and an unusual setting.

#73: One True Thing

One True Thing, by Anna Quindlen

(New York:  Dell, 1995)

Summary:

"Ellen Gulden is in jail, accused of the mercy killing of her mother. She says she didn't do it; she thinks she knows who did.

"When Ellen learns of her mother Kate's cancer, the disease is already far advanced. Her father insists that Ellen quit her job and come home to take care of her, and as Ellen begins to spend her days with Kate, she learns many surprising things, about herself, her mother, and the life choices they both made. But as Kate's illness progresses, and her pain increases, so do the dosages of morphine. And so does Ellen's belief that her mother's suffering is unendurable....

"Widely admired for her intelligence, humor and insight, and for the depth of her perceptions about the public and private lives of ordinary people, Quindlen writes masterfully, and with great sophistication and grace about love and death, sexuality and betrayal, the triangles within a family, identity, growth, and change. Exploring the ambiguities that make up marriage, character, family, and fate, One True Thing takes each of us to the mysteries at the heart of the person we think we are, of who and what we know."

Opening Line:
"Jail is not as bad as you might imagine."

My Take:
This one is beautiful, heartbreaking, powerful. Not in a very wordy mood for once, but really loved it. 

#71: The Cookbook Collector

The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman

(New York: The Dial Press, 2010)

Summary:

"Heralded as 'a modern-day Jane Austen' by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfullment.

"Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposited in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily's boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess's boyfriends, not so much -- as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way.

"Passionate, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can't find what we're looking for: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding onto what is real in a virtual world: love that stays."

Opening Lines:
"Rain at last. Much-needed rain, the weathermen called it."


My Take:
A good read -- perfect blend of being interesting enough to keep me turning pages, but substantial enough for me to care about the characters. Not big on weighty matters while I was home last week, or, for that matter, since I've come back to work (and soul-sucking travel) this week. 

#67: Mohawk

Mohawk, by Richard Russo

(New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1994, c1986)

Summary:

"Mohawk, New York is one of those small towns that lie almost entirely on the wrong side of the tracks. Its citizens, too, have fallen on hard times. Dallas Younger, a star athlete in high school, now drifts from tavern to poker game, losing money, and, inevitably, another set of false teeth. His ex-wife, Anne, is stuck in a losing battle with her mother over the care of her sick father. And their son, Randall, is deliberately neglecting his school work -- because in a place like Mohawk, it doesn't pay to be too smart.

"In Mohawk, Richard Russo explores these lives with profound compassion and flint-hard wit. Out of derailed ambitions and old loves, secret hatreds and communal myths, he has created a richly plotted, densely populated, and wonderfully written novel that captures every nuance of America's backyard."

Opening Line:
"The back door to the Mohawk Grill opens on an alley it shares with the junior high."


My Take:
Was going to go for something fluffy again (Four Blondes, anyone?) but something about Russo's stories of hard luck former boom towns along the old Erie Canal seemed appropriate for my last scheduled week in Boston exile. He usually manages to be both wistful and warm-hearted at the same time. Let's see.

(time passes)

A good choice. As with Russo's other novels, he manages to portray upstate New York's Appalachia-meets-Rust-Belt, seen-better-days small towns and their inhabitants both so clearly, but with such compassion and warmth, that you almost find yourself seeing why it is that folks still live there (though you're not quite packing your own bags, of course). Mohawk isn't my world, but it's not too far away and I've driven through it often enough (this is metaphor, people; Russo's Mohawk isn't a real town, though it may as well be) that it was a good read for a homesick week. Recommended if you like portraits of small town Americana, or even if you just enjoyed Empire Falls and want to get a look at the town 30 years earlier. 

#66: Winter's Bone

Winter's Bone, by Daniel Woodrell

(New York: Back Bay Books, 2007)

 Summary:
"The sheriff's deputy at the front door brings hard news to Ree Dolly. Her father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date.

"Ree's father has disappeared before. The Dolly clan has worked the shadowy side of the law for generations, and arrests (and attempts to avoid them) are part of life in Rathlin Valley. But the house is all they have, and Ree's father would never forfeit it to the bond company unless something awful happened. With two young brothers depending on her and a mother who's entered a kind of second childhood, Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive, or else see her family turned out into the unforgiving cold.

"Sixteen-year-old Ree, who has grown up in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks, learns quickly that asking questions of the rough Dolly clan can be a fatal mistake. She perseveres past obstacles of every kind and finally confronts the top figures in the family's hierarchy.

"Along the way to a shocking revelation, Ree discovers unexpected depths in herself and in a family network that protects its own at any cost."

Opening Line:
"Ree Dolly stood at break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat. "

My Take:
This was a Winter's Bone day. It's a short book, and I read it all on my Kindle today -- part in my apartment after polishing off the less-than-satisfying An Inconvenient Woman, and most at the Summer Arts Festival in Copley Square while waiting for the Low Anthem set. (I'd hoped to stick around for Suzanne Vega but the weather had other plans.)

Another review I found online while looking for a synopsis to steal called Woodrell's use of language "spare and judicious," which seems pretty accurate. If you've seen the acclaimed indie movie, it actually follows the book pretty closely (except for having changed Ree's youngest sibling to a sister, which hardly matters). If anything, the movie depicts a slightly-less-hardscrabble home for Ree and her family than I'd envisioned, though the relatives' homes are pretty much as I'd pictured them. I'm not sure whether to think depiction of the rural, southern Missouri Ozarks setting is too over-the-top (again, in a spare and judicious way), or if I'm just too sheltered here on the east coast, and there really is that big a difference between central New York-style Appalachia and the Central South/ Ozark variety.

Then again, I remember driving a short 20 minutes into the backcountry with Mr. Hazel a few years ago for a hike in a state forest, and being stunned just at the shanties I could see from the road and the fact that this particular flavor of poverty existed so close to my own, smug-college-town backyard. In other words, strike the question about whether there are really Ozark communities this poor and off-grid, because there probably are.

Anyway, a good book and a good movie. I'd recommend both, if you're up for something more than a little on the dark and gritty side and aren't looking for a magical happy ending.

#64: Rise and Shine

Rise and Shine, by Anna Quindlen

(New York: Random House, 2006)

 

Summary:

"From Anna Quindlen, acclaimed author of Blessings, Black and Blue, and One True Thing, a superb novel about two sisters, the true meaning of success, and the qualities in life that matter most.

It’s an otherwise ordinary Monday when Meghan Fitzmaurice’s perfect life hits a wall. A household name as the host of Rise and Shine, the country’s highest-rated morning talk show, Meghan cuts to a commercial break–but not before she mutters two forbidden words into her open mike.

In an instant, it’s the end of an era, not only for Meghan, who is unaccustomed to dealing with adversity, but also for her younger sister, Bridget, a social worker in the Bronx who has always lived in Meghan’s long shadow. The effect of Meghan’s on-air truth telling reverberates through both their lives, affecting Meghan’s son, husband, friends, and fans, as well as Bridget’s perception of her sister, their complex childhood, and herself. What follows is a story about how, in very different ways, the Fitzmaurice women adapt, survive, and manage to bring the whole teeming world of New York to heel by dint of their smart mouths, quick wits, and the powerful connection between them that even the worst tragedy cannot shatter."

Opening Line:

"From time to time some stranger will ask me how I can bear to live in New York City."

My Take:

Started this on the plane from Syracuse to Philadelphia to Boston last night (I don't remember exactly which leg I was on or which airport I was cooling my heels in at the time) and it's promising; I usually like Quindlen. Stay tuned.  

(time passes)

Pretty darned good. Meatier and more nuanced than a lot of the bourgeois upper-class porn I've read, which is a lot. (And hey, I mean "porn" in the sense of "sneaking a guilty peek into how the 1% or the 0.001% lives" sense, not the "50 shades" way.) Chiefly this is because Meghan is neither the narrator nor the book's chief focus. That would be her younger sister, Bridget, who leads a far more ordinary, low-profile life as a social worker, dating a much older cop. She's close to her famous sister, sure, but seems not all that interested in basking in her limelight; if anything, it's a distraction from their relationship. Rather than being a thin frame story for a book full of designer name-dropping, Rise and Shine is more about the effects of fame and wealth on those on its periphery: spouses, siblings, kids. 

If I have to pick a quibble, it's with the almost-too-perfect character of Leo, Meghan's son and Bridget's nephew. While he shows some flashes of normal youth -- being a bit untidy, bringing a stray kitten home to his aunt's apartment on a whim, buying way too many apples -- he's otherwise depicted as just so good-natured and unspoiled (despite a mother who makes $10 million a year and a father whose investment banking career is nothing to sneeze at either) that it seems too obvious a set-up for the "worst tragedy" alluded to in the publisher's blurb. As this is part of what saves the book from a too-perfectly-wrapped-up ending, though, I'll take it. Worth a read or a recommendation.

 

#59: A Map of the World

A Map of the World, by Jane Hamilton

(New York: Doubleday, 1994)

 Summary:

"The book is concerned with how one seemingly inconsequential moment can alter lives forever. Alice Goodwin, mother of two, school nurse and wife of an aspiring dairy farmer in Wisconsin, is getting ready to take her two daughters and her best friend, Theresa's two little girls to their farm pond to swim. When she goes upstairs to find her bathing suit, Lizzy, Theresa's 2-year-old, slips away to the pond and drowns. It all goes downhill from there. The town tramp, whom Alice reprimanded for constantly bringing her sick son to school, accuses Alice of molesting her child. The entire town turns on the Goodwin family, fairly new to the area, and several other mothers come forward with tales of Alice's 'abuse'. Imprisonment, trial and loss of the farm ensue and Alice's husband and Theresa become 'involved.'

"The novel is essentially about a search for authenticity in the contemporary American midwest. A couple struggles to maintain their lives on a farm, keep to ethical practices of both farming and living, and to raise their two young children, but American society stymies their efforts. The novel is an indictment of the U.S. legal system, which works with the subtlety and mercy of a sledgehammer; the farming system, which values dollars over good food and the environment; and the American idea of marriage, which is falling apart from its own internal contradictions. However, the novel manages to be very funny throughout. Its humor comes out not just in the wicked, scathing sentences of its first third, told in a voice that one imagines is close to the author's own, but also in the structural choice of placing section two in the voice of the hilariously but tragically non-verbal husband. The contrast between husband's and wife's thinking is far more eloquent and entertaining than the recent popular psychological studies on the subject of male-female mental processes. Also included: the annoyingly efficient but oblivious mother-in-law, class and race differences but from a female perspective, and the politics of a small town."

Opening Line:

"I used to think if you fell from grace it was more likely than not the result of one stupendous error, or else an unfortunate accident."

My Take:

Yay! Once I finish this entry I'll be up to the book I'm currently reading.

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.